By
Dan
The largest poker room in America will soon play host to one of the fastest-growing live events around – The L.A. Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino. The $10,000 World Poker Tour event will kick off on Saturday, February 24 and
PocketFivesLive.com Tournament Reporter Court Harrington will be on hand to cover all the action. Over 600 players are expected to enter, which means the prize pool should be well over $6 million. The champion is guaranteed to take home at least $2 million and the runner up is guaranteed at least $1 million.
The 2006 L.A. Poker Classic was won by poker pro Alan Goehring, who took home nearly $2.4 million. Goehring defeated Daniel Quach heads up. In 2005, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi defeated a star-studded final table that also included Erick Lindgren, Ted Forrest, and Hung La to take home $1.8 million. The year before, Antonio Esfandiari – then 24 years old, the same age The Grinder was when he won – defeated Vinny Vinh heads up for $1.4 million. Besides the cash, the winner of the L.A. Poker Classic will also capture a $25,000 entry into the WPT Championship at Bellagio, now just two months away. PocketFivers already entered for the L.A. Poker Classic include Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter, who’s looking for his third WPT final table (his last was on May 17, 2006 at the Mirage Poker Showdown). Jeff “HB_Hitman” Anderson, a Triple Crown winner, will also be in attendance.
PocketFives.com Chief Editor Adam Small comments on the upcoming tournament: "The L.A. Poker Classic is one of the staple events of the WPT that’s been going on since the beginning of the tour. It always draws one of the juiciest prizepools of all the events and brings in top players from all over the world."
There are 30 events that make up the L.A. Poker Classic, whose Main Event is the $10,000 WPT tournament. Other events include a $2,590 limit hold’em event, a $2,590 no limit tournament, and two $250,000 Guaranteed $330 rebuy no limit events. The Main Event is followed by the WPT Celebrity Invitational. Already scheduled to compete are James Woods, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Don Cheadle, Ron Livingston, Mimi Rogers, Lou Diamond Phillips, Norm McDonald, and others. The event is scheduled for March 3-5 has a $200,000 prize pool. This is an invite-only event.
After the final table of the L.A. Poker classic concludes on Thursday, March 1, Harrington will travel nearly 3,000 miles to the other side of the United States – Connecticut (see map below). The Foxwoods Poker Classic will take place on March 30. In comparison to the Commerce Casino boasting the largest poker room in the world, Foxwoods is the largest casino in the world, attracting over 40,000 people every day to the forests of Connecticut.
Good luck to all PocketFivers competing in these events! Visit www.pocketfiveslive.com for more details and for complete event coverage.